West Somerset Railway General Discussion

A bridge at Seaward Way would have a number of advantages over s renewed cross:

(1) Inherently safer. Pedestrians and road / rail vehicles not trying to occupy the same space.

(2) Zero ‘road closed’ time for each rail movement, so both road and rail movements facilitated.

(3) Signalling system significantly simplified / maintenance commitment reduced.

(4) Signal positions mode of operation freed of requirement to accommodate road - so shunt moves would only need to proceed as far as required.

(5) Requirement to maintain colour light inner home reduced facilitating future replacement with Mechanical Signal.

Perhaps the factor that pulls against this is cost (but I am not a civil engineer). However, as well as the capital cost of the renewal of the crossing equipment, the annual maintenance charge would be avoided, as would renewal again in 20-25 years time.

I do hope (as a Somerset Council Tax payer) and a Minehead road user, that the above option has been evaluated against a true assessment of the increased delays a full-barrier monitored crossing will cause.

Robin

 

The crossing's road surface was replaced with precast concrete sections with rails glued into channels. This involved replacing the rails for a short distance either side, and installing compatible special heavier sleepers. The alignment of the rails was changed slightly to ease the transition from Orpins curve into the straight platform.

There was no change to the gates or the operating instructions for them. They are classed as "train crew operated" and protected by standard "STOP open crossing gates before proceeding" boards. When a "gateman" is available he/she will open the gates on the train's approach and display a flag or hand lamp signal to authorise the driver to pass the STOP board.
The fact that they are within station limits and within a signal section does not change this method of operation. The line speed at the crossing is 10 mph.

During the road closure the opportunity was also taken to strengthen the sides of the adjacent waterway between Orpins siding g/f and the gates.

Edit: further detail, the actual gates which did not need to be renewed are of steel construction of traditional appearance, and ISTR still bear the scars of the last road vehicle impact, having stopped a stolen van which was driven straight at them.
When a car was driven full at the Cranbrook Rd gates (possibly foot on wrong pedal in an automatic) a few years back, the impact split one of the gates into two sections and bent the other sufficiently to pass its stop post, gatemen at all crossing now instructed to stand well clear of the swing of gates including allowance for passing the stop post.
I'm not sure whether actual timber gates would have stood up to the impacts as well.

 

Bridge =
£15m to £20m excluding land costs
Visual impact
Large footprint for embankment, requiring land = add a few more £m
How would the bridge now be built whilst the existing road open to traffic, suggesting built off line = more land = more £m
Thus unlikely to prove value for money, and also unaffordable.

 

Whilst I fully agree with Riobin I am doubtful if there is actually room for a bridge given the topgraphy of the site. There is a fairly new bridge at Oath 2km East of the Athelney crossing. on a similar flat site. The length including approach ramps is close to 300m long. To build such a bridge at Minehead would probably involve demolishing properties the compensation costs for which would be high.

 

Stolen vehicles were the cause of an incident I saw many years ago where someone flagging an ungated crossing had to leap for his life. Going into the road whether to shut gates or flag trains across is not a good thing and that crossing is now AHB controlled which is appropriate for the pattern of use.

Just say "thank you" to the nice County Council WSR for doing the work at their expense.

PH

 

With half barriers, even if they are down, a vehicle already on the crossing has a clear way to escape from an oncoming train. With full barriers a vehicle can be trapped, hence the need for the crossing to be controlled, so that the signaller can see, either directly or via CCTV, that the crossing is clear before he clears the appropriate signal for the train. The signal is interlocked with the barriers as a further check that the barriers are closed before the signal can be cleared.

Sent from my Lenovo TAB 2 A10-70F using Tapatalk

 

Light pollution.

 

At the risk of being stood up against a wall and shot ......

Turn Minehead station into a museum, sell the rest of the site off for development. That will help fund the building of a new terminus to the east of Seaward Way closer to Butlins and without the need for a crossing.

If it's not important to run into Taunton and we are happy to have our southern terminus in the middle of nowhere on the outskirts of small village and use it as a parkway station; if we really believe that it's the journey that is important rather than getting somewhere and that a truncated heritage line that is disconnected from any justifiable transport need is a valid goal in its own right then what's the problem? There are many precedents.

Myself, I am grateful to SCC for its faith in our operation and I say grab the money and build the crossing before someone in authority puts 2 and 2 together. Then make plans to run into Taunton so that the railway becomes 'really useful'.

 

Yes the decking might be new, but the bridge was built over 110 years ago when this section of the line was doubled when the new line from Castle Cary to Langport was built. Also the line is on an embankment to be above the normal flood plain so the bridge is a lot higher than normal due to the surrounding land. This is Stathe road bridge the next one down line which shows how high the line is above the flood plain (with a half size train (flying banana) as well thrown in) https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.0...4!1s_Ue0C6fxPVGZIfPuH7Ahgg!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

 

Noted and thanks.

 

Leaving aside the public transport angle (there's another thread for that), removing one of the most distinctive features of the line so that it ends nowhere in particular does nothing for the heritage of the line. Not to mention that, commercially, you remove a key selling point for the line - that, as a tourist attraction in it's own right, it goes somewhere. I have holidayed in Pickering a number of times, and used the train to Whitby every time. But I would never do so as public transport - just as the framework of a day out.

 

We should be lucky that this road wasn't built before the WSR took over the railway, as a new halt type station would have been built on the other side of the new road and the ''Old'' station site sold off for houses, as this would have saved the cost of building a level crossing.

 

The fact that this didn't occur in 1989 / 90 when the WSR had not had the period of growth over the following decade, was down at least in part to Chris van den Arend and Mark Smith making the case for the Railway. A glance at the map will also show that the land for a bridge is available, between the adjacent road junctions and property entrances without demolishing buildings and the like. That is no accident, even if it is not the solution for now. I was privileged to make a small contribution to discussions then.

Robin

 

It looks a tight squeeze to me not just for the finshed structure but to allow space during construction. Having said the cost would totally rule it out.

 

It would still arrive at Minehead, a short distance from the beach and a lot nearer than before to the 7,000 Butlins visitors. It already currently ends nowhere in particular, on the outskirts of the Bishops Lydeard commuter village and many people on this forum appear to be very satisfied with that.

The comparison with Whitby is not entirely valid as Whitby is far more akin to Minehead than Taunton, a very much larger town with superb rail links to the rest of the country. People travel for many reasons and the use of the Minehead branch for a day out seems to me to equate to your use of Whitby for the same purpose.

 

Most students put down strong roots where they go to University so you'll probably need to come to terms with these things. Mind, you, there are a lot of better places than Sheffield in the Broad Acres and I wouldn't blame you if you settled elsewhere.

 

Who knows, all I know is it'll need to be near a heritage railway!

 

Can’t imagine why anyone would want to live in such a place...

Robin

 

The Whitby comparison stands well, as my comparison is of tourist travel from a minor location (Pickering/Bishops Lydeard) to a tourist honeypot (Whitby/Minehead), not travel from the honeypot to elsewhere. That is a business that WSR appear to do well at, and which was for a long time the primary purpose of the railway. In those commercial terms, I suggest that WSR suffers little from not being connected to Taunton, especially given the financial and other impacts that accompany extending heritage railway operation onto Network Rail.

I suggest there is widespread agreement that extending the WSR into Taunton is, in and of itself, a "good thing". The key questions appear to be "how good" and "at what cost" - as discussed at length in the other thread, and where someone with close knowledge of the Swanage experience has advised that their extension to Wareham has had a profound impact on the whole railway.

This occasional visitor to West Somerset lives on the Skegness line, and has experience of the Whitby line. Both survived Beeching as "basic railways", with little or nothing of what made them interesting left. They also have poor services that rely on very limited subsidies and are of limited use to those who need them for commuting. I have no reason to believe the Minehead branch would have been any different had it survived. Given that, I would rather that the heritage operation survived as an attraction and memorial, than that it was threatened by expanding in a way that history and experience suggests it can ill-afford, would struggle to sustain, and would struggle to integrate with the heritage operation.

 

Item 5 is an excellent idea but is entirely irrelevant as an argument in favour of a bridge, as it applies with equal validity to a signalman-controlled crossing.